


perfect in my mind

by mimizans



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimizans/pseuds/mimizans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for a prompt at the avengers comment ficathon. "clint/natasha; i'd do whatever i wanted to do with whoever i wanted to do it with."</p>
            </blockquote>





	perfect in my mind

The air is heavy with static, stacked with the smell of ozone. There’s plaster in her eyes, on her clothes, in every breath she takes. The sound of Steve yelling in her earpiece and the rhythmic thunk of Clint’s arrows seem a hundred worlds away. She fires the last three rounds in her gun, each one sending a HYDRA agent to the ground and a shock of red mist up in the air.

She draws a knife and vaults onto the upper level, starts in on the bloody work of slitting jugulars and puncturing lungs. She’s counting each kill, listening to the guttural noises of finished men. The air is red and white, wet crimson fog and fine snowy powder. 

Her count gets to six, and suddenly the room is quiet. The sounds of bullets and arrows and repulsor blasts have faded away, leaving a black hole in the wake of the din. They’ve won, Natasha realizes. Each team member checks in on the comm link, and everyone is accounted for and unharmed. It’s the best present she could ask for, under the circumstances.

No one knows it’s her birthday, of course. No one except for Clint. He had gotten the information out of her years ago using a very specific combination of cunnilingus and vodka, but she had looked him in the eye afterwards and made him promise to keep his winnings to himself. Natasha had never been one for birthdays. When she was young there was nothing but her training, and when she was older they seemed superfluous, a waste of time and energy.

Tony Stark has once asked Natalie Rushman what she would do on her last birthday. Natasha had lied then, said what Tony wanted to hear. She’d tilted her head, her long red curls feathering against her blouse. “I’d do whatever I wanted to do,” she’d said, “with whoever I wanted to do it with.” 

Standing in the bloody ruins of a HYDRA facility on her 25th birthday, Natasha's mind goes back to that conversation. She thinks about what she would want to do today if she wouldn’t wake up tomorrow, can almost imagine that in 24 hours she will be lying dead, just another corpse splashed red and powdered white. She thinks about what she would miss. Who she would miss.

Natasha settles down close to Clint on the couch that night. She pulls his arm around her shoulders and settles against his side. She doesn’t do this, not usually, but he doesn’t ask her why; he just reaches up to toy with the ends of her hair, leans down to press a kiss against her forehead. Whatever I want to do, she thinks, with whoever I want to do it with. Natasha presses her face against Clint's neck and breathes in.


End file.
